Why are the police at odds with the people who work in a defunct mine in South Africa

For weeks, police have been working at the opening of an abandoned gold mine in South Africa, trying to arrest people working inside illegally.

Since the conflict started, more than 1,000 miners have come forward to be arrested, one body was found that was beginning to decompose, members of the community went to court to ensure that their loved ones continue to receive food and water.

It is not clear how many miners are still underground in Stilfontein, North West province. Police say there are hundreds. But community members say there are thousands of people below, either unwilling to come out and face arrest, or too weak to go out on their own.

“It’s a waiting game right now,” said Busi Thabane, a South African mining expert As It Happened hosted by Nil Köksal.

Thabane is the general manager of the Bench Marks Foundation, a corporate watchdog that researches the impacts of mining on South African communities.

He says the standoff is the latest culmination of a decades-long dispute over illegal mining in South Africa, a dangerous industry largely run by criminals who hire people looking for work.

“It’s a very serious problem,” he said, and one that will not be solved by disbanding the police force alone.

Why do people work in closed mines?

Big mines were a major source of employment in South Africa, Thabane said – not just for local people, but also from nearby Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

“The economy of those countries has survived because of the salaries of people who come to work in South Africa because of the mines,” he said.

But over the past 20 years or so, mining companies have been closing up shop, often packing up and leaving the mines behind. The government estimates that there are about 6,000 unused or abandoned mines in South Africa.

This is where illegal miners come in. They are known as of the zamas — or “hustlers” in the Zulu language — looking for gold and other precious metals in abandoned places.

“These workers, they find themselves unemployed. They are workers with very low level of skills. They have never done anything but work in the mine for most of their life,” said Thabane.

These operations are largely run by pirates, he says, who sell items to wholesalers or metal buyers, take a huge profit, and often charge a “protection fee” to the miners they hire.

“That way, this business brings in a lot of money. The miners themselves don’t make much money from it, but the people who sell and sell this gold really make money,” he said.

Christopher Rutledge, executive director of the non-governmental organization Mining Affected Communities In Action, says the mining companies themselves contribute to this.

“In some cases, the mining companies will shut down the operation and allow it of the zamas to the mine, and they would buy gold from of the zamas … because it’s cheaper for them,” he told CBC News.

Authorities have not said who owns the Stilfontein mine.

How are the authorities responding?

Try zamas they often live in the mines for long periods of time, relying on those above to provide them with food, water, tobacco and other supplies.

So in December, South Africa launched a joint police, government and military campaign called “Close the Hole” or “Close the Pit“in Zulu.

The idea is to stop illegal mining by cutting off resources and starving the miners. So far, police say 14,000 illegal miners have been arrested and $277,000 in cash and roughly $1.8 million worth of rough diamonds have been seized.

Police say illegal miners are dangerous because they are often armed, and are known to fight violent battles between criminal gangs.

As a result, they say it is not safe for the police to enter the mines themselves to make arrests.

What happened in Stilfontein?

Authorities have closed most of the exits to the Stilfontein mine in recent months, and recently cut off food and water supplies to miners about 2,500 meters underground.

“We are not sending help to the criminals over there, we will smoke them,” said Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, a minister in the President’s office last week.

Those words drew anger from members of the community, most of whom have loved ones in the mine.

A group of citizens and civil society organizations called the Society for the Protection of Our Constitution challenged this ban in court.

In an interim order on Saturday, the Pretoria High Court ordered the police to allow the flow of food and water to the miners.

“Currently, we have no idea how many are healthy, how many are sick, how many need health care,” said Thebane. “But the supply of food and water has started again. So that brings some relief.”

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has defended the campaign to ban weapons in Stilfontein, calling the mine “a place of crime.” But he also urged the police to evacuate the miners safely.

Some of them have been secret for months, and news reports describe those who have been released as frail and frail.

Rescuers were using a rope to lift some of the miners up, and police said they were looking to set up some sort of cage to take them down the shaft.

Miners who appear to be healthy and unharmed are detained, said Thabane. Those who were not were taken to the hospital.

“But the aim is for them to be arrested, according to the government,” he said.

One decomposing body, believed to be that of a miner, has been found. Police said they are still trying to find out who and the cause of his death.

What’s next?

Thabane says surgery does not fix the root of the problem.

“We may take them out now, but we are afraid that it will be a temporary solution,” he said.

He urged the government to listen to the recommendations of 2022 auditor general report on abandoned mines.

That means cleaning up abandoned sites, holding mining companies to their duty to close their operations in a proper and safe manner when they are closed, and enacting rules for small-scale mining, so that people can do this type of work safely and legally.

“In terms of the crime part of it, the government must find a way to stop this crime at the level where it finds the chiefs and heads of these groups,” he said.